Apps Update - August 2026

I think the apps are really on the decline. Like, they've obviously been declining for a long time, but it's starting to feel dire. I've personally lacked the initiative to actively participate in them since Trump was re-elected. I've tried a couple of times, but it just seems like wasted energy. I suspect others feel the same. In a recent stint, I noticed that both Hinge and Tinder have introduced UX features that seem designed to coerce more active participation out of users. Tinder shouts hooray whenever you log in on consecutive days, like it's your Duolingo streak or something. Hinge has introduced these little badges that tell you whether the person in question shows "thoughtful signals" -- i.e., do they send likes, manage the likes they receive, and reply to messages. Basically, are they a participant rather than a passive observer?

These little manipulative tactics do not strike me as signs of robust digital ecosystems with thriving wildlife populations. They seem more like somewhat desperate attempts to stave off collapse. Making people do things because it will earn them a little merit badge (and because the lack of one will, in theory, threaten their status and desirability on the app)is very different than a thriving community where people are eagerly connecting. Now, my experience of the app is not the norm because I am a middle-aged queer who lives in Northern New England, and we are a very small population. It's a bit of a ghost town for me, full of people I've matched with before (and some I've even gone on dates with) and other people I've never seen and have no particular desire to get to know. It's not entirely about age, either. On Feeld, the default age setting is 18+ (and I am not an anti-age-gap person, but I do not need to see or be seen by anyone under 35), and I can still swipe through almost every relevant profile in about 5 minutes. Some of the most promising seeming people I've matched with on Tinder have been in...Germany. (And talking to straight women who are even 5 or so years younger than me, it doesn't seem great for them, either. Some data/journalism/politics guys in their 30s that I follow on Bluesky who probably live in NYC or DC will intermittently erupt into despair over the bleakness of Hinge. I think the bleakness is of a different texture, but likely the same degree)

Mostly the matches (primarily of people I have matched with before or who live far away) don't lead to messaging and I can't blame anyone for that. Who wants to try! I did match with a famous writer on Pride Weekend when I was feeling dejected, and god bless her. (No messages were exchanged there, either. She was 3,000 miles away and honestly, given my track record, I don't think it's even worth the risk. But I appreciated the ego boost.) I have surmised (because of the incredibly small sample size and the way Tinder snitches all the time) that someone I knew from another life -- and via my ex -- probably swiped right on me, which is, well, something. The world feels increasingly too small here.

Last year (I think? What is time?), I got back on for a bit in the summer and went on some perfectly pleasant dates but had to acknowledge my heart just wasn't in it and I wasn't open to anything. And that's probably been true previously, but it's one thing for it to be true and another for me to be aware of it. A big part of this was the political situation and part of it was, embarrassingly, simply not being over a disappointment that happened years ago. I let the women I was corresponding with know and some of them were like "Same!" (I obviously only mentioned the hellscape) and others were like "We could still go out or keep messaging" and, ladies! I need you to make better choices for yourselves. Or at least don't complain about people turning out to be emotionally unavailable and then when someone tells you quite directly that they are, you...persist? I get that self-awareness is attractive but LISTEN TO IMAN (sorry this is an incredibly obscure Rosie O'Donnell joke): When someone tells you that, leave them alone.

I actually consented to go out with one of them (my elusive quest for queer friends continues apace) and she ended up leading me to a...secluded rock overlooking the ocean. I was like, "Wait a minute..." When we said goodbye, she said, "Are you sure [about the whole being not open to something]" and I said, in more polite terms, "Uh, yes. Hence why I said that to you directly before we met." Not sure if she expected me to be all, "Well, now that we're here on this rock looking at the moon, those previous hurts and current stresses have simply melted away.") Like, I swear, it's not a gambit. I am an extremely straightforward person. Is everyone else just full of shit all the time?

It does make me quite grateful that I did all the dating I did back in 2023 and 2024, which didn't lead to anything but that did really improve my self-esteem. (Not something a lot of people can say about online dating.) I'm not sure I could do the same now, either because I've aged out of contention or because of the genuinely shit real-world conditions. That years-old disappointment, which spurred me to try something different, happened at just the right time, in hindsight. Any later, and I would have probably missed out.